Jenny Laird

The ERDC UAS program began out of a need to track feral hogs. In the ten years since Ms. Laird first joined that project (2014), the program has grown into a multimillion-dollar program with 60 Educational Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and nearly 200 platforms supporting civil and military engineering missions. As ERDC’s primary Aircrew Training Program Manager and principal point of contact for the EPAs, Ms. Laird has skillfully built the volume and scope of this program. She proactively engaged with external partners to open a new avenue for ERDC’s UAS-related research by expanding the program into installation assessments, infrastructure damage reports, and emergency response. The Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit chose ERDC to partner with for its pilot effort Blue sUAS 2.0 and Ms. Laird also serves as a subject matter expert for USACE Headquarters for assessing and evaluating new UAS technologies.